I'm a Main Street business evangelist and marketing veteran with over 25 years in the trenches, and I write about small business financing as an employee at OnDeck and also at Forbes. I try to make the maze of small business finance accessible by weaving personal experiences and other anecdotes into a regular discussion around one of the biggest challenges facing small business today. The opinions expressed are my own and not those of OnDeck.

Off With His Head! Yahoo's BIG Mistake?

An apology might not be enough for Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson after being exposed for lying on his resume. USAtoday.com cites a number of angry, if anonymous, Yahoo employees:

“He cheated and lied his way to his position at PayPal, didn’t get caught, got brazen, and decided to swing it to become a CEO of an ailing giant.”

“Ironic that the day that people are asking for Scott Thompson’s resignation is the last day of work for many, many of the folks whom he laid off several weeks ago. Wouldn’t it be something if he left WITH them?”

Dismissing this as an “inadvertent error” didn’t work very well for Yahoo either. As a result, according to USAtoday.com, “Yahoo’s board opened an investigation into the circumstances that led to the computer science degree being included in Thompson’s bio. Thompson told employees that he ‘respects the process’ and will provide whatever information the board requests.”

Although this is egg on everyone’s face at Yahoo, if I were Thompson, I’d want to crawl under a rock. Being exposed for falsifying information on a resume would certainly lead to immediate termination in most companies if you were hired as a software developer or marketing executive—shouldn’t Thompson face the same? If I was doing business with Yahoo, I would certainly start to wonder where he would otherwise draw the line on what he would or wouldn’t do in our business relationship.

Although I agree with those employees who are shouting, “Off with his head” I have to wonder if the way we recruit and hire in general is at fault. Resume scrapers and other technology “weed out” many who might otherwise be excellent candidates because their resumes don’t include the right keywords or certifications. My guess would be that Thompson is simply the most recent high-level resume-cheater to be caught. How many other mid- and senior-level managers in organizations around the country have done or are doing the same thing?

Hiring the right people is critical to organizational success.

Although I understand that current HR best practices are designed to help filter people to eliminate those who obviously are either not a good fit or unqualified, I can’t help but wonder how many excellent candidates get left behind because they don’t have the right degree of education or the right certifications. I’ve worked on teams with many people who didn’t have the “right” credentials, but performed at a much higher and skillful level than those that did. I understand that it might require a little more work for recruiters and HR teams to get better acquainted with potential hires, but I don’t see that as a negative situation if it means hiring managers will have a better queue of potential candidates to choose from.

I recently stumbled upon an article written by Jeff Haden that might shed some light on how to spot greatness. “Forget good to great,” says Haden. “Here’s what makes a great employee remarkable.” I tend to agree.

They ignore job descriptions: We’ve all worked with people who hide behind, “That’s not my job.” Remarkable people are able to think on their feet and jump into a situation to offer help, whether or not it’s part of their job description. I have come to recognize this quality in the people I enjoy working with the most.

They’re eccentric: I’ve never thought about it this way, but I think Hayden’s right. Some of the most talented people I know are a little unusual (usually in a good way). “People who aren’t afraid to be different naturally stretch boundaries and challenge the status quo,” writes Haden, “and they often come up with the best ideas.”

But they know when to dial it back: Even though I appreciate a little “weirdness”, the best employees recognize that when situations get stressful and it’s crunch-time, they need to seamlessly fit into the team. It’s a balancing act to be sure, but there are people who are able to do it—and they make great team members.

They publicly praise: “Praise from a boss feels good. Praise from a peer feels awesome, especially when you look up to that person,” writes Haden. I couldn’t agree more. Great team members aren’t afraid to publicly recognize the contributions and successes of others on the team. They have a “team success is my success and my success is team success” point of view that builds a lot of camaraderie amongst the team.

And they privately complain: Nobody likes to be publicly thrown under the bus. Sometimes more can be accomplished with a private conversation than a public flogging in front of the boss. I agree that problems need to be brought forward, but if they can be handled quietly, without making minor issues matters of public concern, I think that’s a good thing.

They speak when others won’t: We all know people who will never speak up about the elephant in the room. Hayden argues, “Remarkable employees have an innate feel for the issues and concerns of those around them, and step up to ask questions or raise important issues when others hesitate.”

They like to prove others wrong: It’s less about confrontation and more about proving the naysayers wrong. “The kid without a college degree or the woman who was told she didn’t have leadership potential often possess a burning desire to prove other people wrong,” says Haden. “Education, intelligence, talent, and skill are important, but drive is critical.” Sometimes those real performers aren’t the people we might expect.

They’re always fiddling: I’ve known and worked with some pretty incredible people who are always trying to improve what they’re doing and make things better. They’re never satisfied with what’s happening right now.

I’ll be the first to admit that finding these traits in a potential new hire is probably nigh impossible, but we have no chance of finding them if we continue to use keyword scrapers to determine who we should interview and who we shouldn’t. All we’ll find out is who does the best job of writing their resume to keywords.

There will likely be fallout within the Yahoo board for not doing their due diligence before hiring Thompson. “Patti Heart, the head of the Yahoo search committee that hired Thompson in January, won’t seek re-election at the company’s annual meeting later this year,” writes Michael Liedtke.

I don’t imagine she will be the last to suffer the consequences of flawed recruiting/hiring practices. “Since the scandal began last Thursday, Yahoo shares have fallen 3.4% since the resume scandal surfaced,” writes Abram Brown at Forbes.com. “The stock was down 1.4% to $15.13 in late morning trading today [5/8/12].”

Making the wrong hiring decisions can be fatal for any business. I hope we can all learn from Yahoo. Have you ever had someone lie on a resume? What did you do?

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Aside from the technicalities, is a misstatement or even a bald faced lie on a resume truly a material issue with respect to a hiring decision?

Only in the bizarre and byzantine work of the HR dept. No one else gives a flying f***. Certainly no self respecting business person cares. They only want to know can the person get the job done. Little else matters. If the rest does matter, then there is something wrong with the company’s corporate culture and all the perfect resumes in the world won’t fix that.

To worship at the shrine of the perfect resume is to give credence to the farce that HR practices and peccadilloes have become. If Shakespeare were writing today, he’d say The first thing we should do is kill all the HR people along with all the lawyers.

When hiring managers are looking for a potential hire, the resume is the key to open the door. Ultimately, whether or not someone is a good hire depends upon his or her ability to do the job. I think we all agree on that. But I think integrity matters and lying on a resume should be a big deal. If they’ll lie to get the job, what will they do once they have the job? Integrity matters.

That being said, a system that forces people like Thompson (an obviously very qualified guy) to lie on a resume doesn’t give us the best candidates and is every bit as culpable in this discussion as Thompson himself. The system is broken.

I totally agree that worshiping at the shrine of the perfect resume is a mistake. The resume should be one data point along the path to determining whether a potential candidate is “worthy” of hire. however I don’t think it should be the gate that allows people to enter. Resume scrapers and other such technology is not a good thing if the ultimate goal is to hire the best people.

I strongly believe that Scott lost the respect and control when he shown he has no integrity to be honest. His decision is not taken well by the staff in the company and people doubt is it a sound decision.

Honor and integrity I believe must be part of a leader’s core values to be able to lead a fighting troop. Be it in the army or in the corporate world.

During challenging times as the ones facing business everywhere right now, leading by example and integrity is what holds everyone together towards the same vision within the company. Even us, as being small venture in Central America appreciate the value of walking the talk, and integrity.

Being dishonest is certainly not a good character trait. But, I’m afraid this goes on all the time when people are in a hurry to get what they want and feel that “shortcuts” are just the price of doing business. So this kind of thing goes on all the time and many, many people completely get away with it and are even rewarded for doing it. I still remember a serious instance of “embellishment” that occurred in connection with the 2004 Siemens Science Competition. In this case (fiasco?), the winning project was neither “an out of the box breakthrough”, nor any kind of “new technology” (as claimed). Never the less, even after this became known to all involved, it was covered up rather than disclosed, including by the news media that helped to greatly hype the event (and therefore had a great deal of credibility to lose). Welcome to Harvard?!(well, it’s one way to get in anyway).